Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind

by Carla Kelly

  “Dear brother, you are the easiest mark alive,” Emma said, as she let Richard help her up from the floor. “Come now and let us find the breakfast room. Cook has promised us cinnamon buns and no porridge, Lucy, in honor of the day. Jane?”

  Jane shook her head and placed her hand gently on Olivia’s belly. “Let me just stay here and relish the moment, Emma.” It may not come again, she thought, as the woman blew her a kiss and left the room. In a few days we must leave, and I do not know that I will ever see these dear people again.

  “I will bring you something to eat, Mr. Butterworth.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “And I will sit here until you eat it.” Just as you sit beside me to make sure that I am sleeping peacefully, she thought. “I am a dreadful lot of trouble to you, Mr. Butterworth,” she said.

  “How odd this is then, because I haven’t noticed,” he said. He got up from the arm of the sofa, and squatted by the dollhouse with easy grace. “Lucy is an engine of destruction,” he murmured, looking around the dollhouse. “Ah! Here it is.” Carefully he extracted what remained of the mistletoe from the miniature trellis with its wax roses, and held it over her head. “I never got a turn, Miss Milton. Happy Christmas.”

  She turned her head to offer him her cheek, but he put his other hand under her chin and sat beside her on the sofa, careful not to disturb Olivia as he gently turned her face toward him. He leaned toward her and she closed her eyes, reaching up to pull him closer as he kissed her. “Merry Christmas. Happy New Year,” he murmured, his lips against hers, then kissed her again. “And while we are at it, let us not forget Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Easter in the spring,” punctuating each holiday with a kiss that left her restless and wishing that she had relinquished Olivia to her cradle.

  “I could never forget the holidays!” she murmured as he pressed his hand against the warm skin of her shoulder, under her nightgown and robe.

  Olivia chose that moment to move about and utter the little squeaks that Jane knew were her prelude to a cry that would bring Emma from the breakfast room. She took her hand from his neck to pat the baby, and the moment was over. The mill owner sat back on the sofa, an expression on his face that she had never seen before. He took her hand, raised it to his lips, kissed it, and placed it back on Olivia, who was crying in earnest now.

  With a sigh that she was certain could be heard in the next shire, Mr. Butterworth scooped the baby from her lap. “I believe I owe you an apology, Miss Milton,” he said, then smiled at her. “I mean, if I was planning to review the ecclesiastical year, I should at least have found a more respectable piece of mistletoe. What must you think of me?”

  If ever a woman had an invitation to speak her mind, I am certain this is it, Jane told herself. She stood up, surprised at how unstable her knees seemed. “I think you ….”

  She stopped as Emma hurried into the room to claim the squalling infant from her brother. “Olivia, what will they think of you?” she chided, holding her daughter close. “Jane, could you find her blanket? There is a chill in this room.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Jane said. She found the blanket next to the box holding the new bonnet that Amanda had received from her uncle. When she turned around, Mr. Butterworth was gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  If Mr. Butterworth did not perform a vanishing act, then he came as close to it as a man not an illusionist possibly could, Jane decided. After breakfast, he disappeared into his office and did not come out of it until nearly noon.

  When she wondered out loud to Emma why he had taken himself off, Emily merely shrugged. “That is Scipio’s way,” she explained. “He sees the day as a time for children, and as he has none, off he goes to console himself with double entries.”

  Emma did admit to some surprise later in the morning when Andrew burst into the room where they were bathing Olivia with the breathless announcement that he and Mr. Butterworth were driving to Leeds. “This is odd, indeed,” she murmured to Jane as she wrapped a bathing towel around the wriggling infant.

  “May I inquire the purpose of this expedition?” Jane asked with a smile.

  Andrew shook his head. “Mr. Butterworth said it is an absolute secret,” he said. “Please say that I may! He said we would take Christmas dinner at his favorite inn in Leeds.”

  “Of course you may,” Jane said, puzzled. Mr. Butterworth, you are a curious man, she thought, hoping that her face did not brighten in color from the thought of his mistletoe kisses. Olivia, you are the only witness to his enthusiasm, she told herself, looking at the baby in Emma’s arms. How grateful I am that you are too young to tattle on my own enjoyment of the moment.

  “Dear me, this means they will be going to the Bell and Clapper,” Emma said, after Andrew waved good-bye and darted off, banging the door behind him. She took a smaller towel and dried Olivia’s hair. “Scipio is combining business with secrecy, I suppose. I wonder what he intends? He will eat far too much and require a serious dose of bicarbonate of soda when they return. And he will have heard the latest mill workers’ gossip and likely hired a man or two.” She worked a curl of Olivia’s hair around her finger. “I hope you do not mind that Andrew keeps low company!”

  “I only wish I could think up an excuse to keep Andrew here in such company,” Jane said frankly.

  “Do you?” Emma asked.

  “My dear, you have been a tonic to both of us.” And that is all I will say on the matter, she thought, or my face will grow even redder than Olivia’s is right now. She kissed the baby and started for the door. “Emma, you would not object if Amanda and I checked in on the Christmas goose and decked the hall while Olivia dines?”

  Emma gave her a grateful look. “You know I have no shame when it comes to using my Christmas guest for all she is worth!” She made herself comfortable in the armchair, her hand on her buttons. “After dinner I give the servants a half day off. For supper we Newtons generally ferret around in the pantry. Richard will attempt an omelet, I imagine. If Scipio is in fit shape after doing duty at the Bell and Clapper, he will toast cheese.” She watched Olivia begin to nurse. “This is all dreadfully common to you, isn’t it?”

  Jane blew her a kiss from the doorway. “I prefer to think of it as wonderfully kind to your servants. Supper in the kitchen is probably far more fun than listening to Lady Carruthers begin her annual review of all my shortcomings, and then admonish Andrew to be grateful for every bone she throws him.” She frowned. “I suppose I should not say that.”

  “Sometimes things are easier to bear when they are spoken of,” was Emma’s quiet reply. “Is it so dreadful there, my dear?”

  Jane nodded. “It is, and the wonder of it is that I never realized how unpleasant my Christmases have been because all I had to measure Stover Hall against was the workhouse. But now that I know you Newtons, it will be hard duty, indeed.” She came back into the room and leaned against the door. “I am beginning to think that when your brother suggested that I speak my mind occasionally, I took him more truly at his word than either of us realized.”

  Emma looked down at Olivia for a long moment, and when she looked up, Jane was dismayed to see tears in her eyes. “Jane, if you could only convince my brother to speak his mind now!”

  “I doubt he needs advice from me,” she replied, after a long pause. “He certainly hasn’t ever asked for any.”

  Emma was equally slow to respond. “Asking and needing are only distant relations, Jane. And then there is wanting ….” Her voice trailed away.

  Andrew and the mill owner did not return until after dark, when Richard was concentrating on the omelet and Amanda was placing out the silverware on the servants’ table. Without a word, Emma handed the slumbering Olivia to Jane and prepared her brother a cup of water and soda, which he accepted and downed without a pause. Nodding to them all, he left the room. Just after the door closed behind him, they heard a loud belch. Andrew stared, wide-eyed, then turned away, his shoulders shaking.

  “My de
ar brother,” Emma said to no one in particular. “Amanda, get a platter for your father. Richard, don’t you dare try to flip that omelet!”

  Mr. Butterworth did not reappear for the rest of the evening, but none of the Newtons seemed to think it strange. “Jane, as much as I wish he would change, Scipio is used to the solitary life,” was all Emma said as they sat in the parlor. “When he tires of our company, he turns to his blueprints.”

  And he must also regret planting kiss after kiss on Jane Milton, Jane thought, as she nodded and continued to organize Amanda’s embroidery thread. I shall have to think up an excuse to leave. This is his house; he needn’t have to skulk around in it to avoid an embarrassment he would probably just as soon forget.

  After reading to Andrew and Jacob, she took that thought to bed with her, deriving no pleasure from it. She sat for a long moment at the dressing table, contemplating her own serious expression. “Jane Milton,” she told her reflection, “you will return to Stover Hall and remove that horrid funeral wreath from the door. You could also stop wearing drab funeral colors, except that is all you own.” She sighed, picked up her hairbrush, then set it down again, thinking of the mill owner and how good her hair felt that morning when he brushed it. It occurred to her when she closed her eyes that for the first time in months, she was not dreading sleep. “Thank you for that, Mr. Butterworth,” she murmured.

  She thought she slept well that night, but in the morning the armchair was close to the bed, with the footstool about as far away as a tall man could comfortably rest his feet. She lay in bed, her mind in a perfect jumble. He is watching over me, she thought, touched to her soul by his late-night solicitude, and also knowing somehow that he would not want her to make any comment on it.

  There was nothing she needed to say, anyway. Each morning he was gone to the mills early, not returning until late at night, when there was no time to exchange conversation beyond the commonplace, in the company of his relatives. Night after night she sat in the parlor with all the others, chatting about nonsensicals when she wanted to say so much more.

  She knew she should leave, but even the hint of such a thing brought more tears to Emma’s eyes, and turned Andrew quiet. Lord Denby was no help, either. By letter he assured her that he and Stanton were soldiering on quite well, what with Cecil making a slow recovery and Lady Carruthers practically chained to his side by Mr. Lowe. “Make of it what you will, Jane, but I have never seen my sister so solicitous over anyone’s welfare to such an extreme,” he wrote her. “She has no time to meddle with me, and I am as grateful as a man can be.” He made no inquiry after Andrew; she expected none.

  Any attempt on her part to end the visit seemed to come up against overshadowing events. One night during supper she had worked up her nerve to announce their departure, when Richard and Scipio, late as usual, burst in with the announcement that yes, indeed, Jeremy Bentham had agreed to serve on the board of their mills. She was reluctant to disturb the good feeling of the occasion by the damper of her own resolve to quit the place. “Or perhaps I am still far too easily cowed,” she announced to her mirror that night.

  Admit it, Jane, she thought the next morning, after another night of peaceful sleep and the now-expected sight of the chair and footstool pulled close to the bed, you are in need of Mr. Butterworth’s solicitude, even if he will say nothing, and you have not the courage to press the matter. She thought each night that she would will herself to stay awake and tell him that he needn’t ruin his own hours of sleep anymore, but she was unable to follow through with her good intentions. She kept busy enough in the Newton household to make it impossible for her to wake up in the middle of the night, where before, phantoms had been sufficient to send her gasping and staring into the dark. “Face it, Jane,” she told herself. “You do not wish to free yourself from a kind man’s solicitude.”

  Somehow they continued their visit in Rumsey far beyond New Year’s Day and well into January. Her feeble arguments about Andrew’s education turned moot when room was found for him to attend the vicar’s school with Jacob. Emma came down with a slight cold and insisted that she would trust Olivia to no one but Jane. “Olivia, these are the flimsiest of reasons to keep me here,” Jane announced to the baby one morning as she prepared to bathe her. “I would suspect your dear mother of some conspiracy, except that I cannot imagine what would be its purpose. Oh, bother it.”

  Again she resolved to announce their departure, and again the attempt was pushed into the background by the news this time that Mr. Butterworth’s prediction about the mill in Rumsey had proved accurate: the owners wanted to sell. Amid the general rejoicing—which Andrew joined into with as much enthusiasm as the Newtons, much to her surprise—she knew she couldn’t say anything.

  Except that I must, she told herself the next morning as she pulled the armchair back to its usual place and repositioned the footstool. Andrew and I cannot become indefinite guests, as much as we would wish it. Lady Carruthers would call that rag manners, and for once, I would have to agree with her. She went into the breakfast room, hoping to find it unoccupied. She was not disappointed, and ate her breakfast in silence, doing her best to think up a plausible reason to leave, and coming up with nothing.

  She was dabbing crumbs from her lips and thinking about one last cup of tea when the butler came in carrying a letter. She took it; the frank was Lord Denby, and her heart plummeted, as it always did. She stared at the note a moment, then took a deep breath and opened it.

  To her surprise, it was from Stanton. She spread out the letter on the table, began to read, then shook her head. “Steel yourself for catastrophe, Miss Milton,” she read. “The ornamental plaster on the ceiling in Cecil’s room right over the bed gave way last night and he went into impressive hysterics. Lady Carruthers joined him, and Lord Denby has no peace anymore.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said under her breath. “I wonder if we can blame the servants for this.”

  “Lord Denby swears the old place is falling down,” she read. “He has taken to his bed again, mainly because his sister is on a rampage and Cecil is certain that he is near death. Actually, he received no damage, except that he has a bump on his head and appears—to my mind—no more addled than usual. But who can tell? I am sorry to ruin your holiday, but we need you here, Jane. Yours respectfully, Oliver Stanton.”

  Jane leaned back in her chair. Stanton has provided the perfect excuse, she thought. I wonder why I am not filled with relief? “All holidays end, Jane,” she told herself firmly as she left the breakfast room and went in search of the footman. “It is time to return to wary diplomacy.”

  The coachman took her to the mill, driving slowly past the row of tenements that was only a pile of rubble now. She had seen the blueprints during many an evening in the parlor. By summer most of the block would be rebuilt and inhabited once more. She leaned forward for a better look at the corner that would house the new school. Mr. Butterworth had asked for her opinion on the design, and she had offered suggestions. The mill workers’ children would be educated there until the age of twelve, and then allowed to choose between work in the factory or apprenticeship elsewhere. Staring at the leveled block, and contemplating the good things to come, it occurred to her that she had fewer choices than one of Mr. Butterworth’s mill children.

  I will have to change that, she thought, as the carriage slowed before the mill and then stopped. She could see her reflection in the carriage glass. I will have to change myself.

  She located Richard in the mill office, intent upon the ledgers before him, and showed him the letter. He gestured toward the door that led to the mill floor. “Scipio is roaming the floor,” he said. “I can send someone to look for him.”

  Jane shook her head, not wishing to distract him from his business. “I can find him, and tell him that Andrew and I must leave.”

  “We wish you did not have to go,” Richard said, as she left the office.

  Not as much as I wish it, she thought. She had been to the mill severa
l times since that first visit, and she looked around with pleasure at the motion and color. Where first she had seen only confusion, now she admired the economy of movement and the rhythm of the looms and the workers who fed them. The women, uniformed and tidy, smiled shyly as she passed. She noted with appreciation that their hair was confined under close-fitting caps, and their sleeves were narrow. The floors were smooth and even. There was nothing to catch on machinery or trip them, bringing sudden maiming or death. It is so simple to do the right thing, she thought. How ironic that virtue is often a last resort, in business and in life.

  As she walked through the noisy mill, a whistle sounded. The looms slowed but did not stop as some of the workers left their positions to rest or seek the necessary. She found Mr. Butterworth seated on an upturned wooden spool, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and one brace broken from its mooring. I believe he is worse than a small boy, she thought with a smile as she noticed the grease on his long fingers and a corresponding smudge near his ear.

  When he saw her, he rose and excused himself from the knot of workers seated nearby and came to her. She noticed his eyes on the letter in her hand. “I suppose that is bad news from Denby, which announces that you must return to mediate, or expedite, or placate,” he commented.

  She handed him the letter, noting his frown as he read. “And what are you supposed to do, Miss Milton?” he asked as he handed back the letter. “Coddle Cecil into rational behavior, assure Lord Denby that he is not dying, and let Lady Carruthers trample up and down your spine? Repair that drafty old heap singlehandedly and offset years of neglect?”

  She could not help but notice the irritation in his words. “I suppose that is it, sir,” she replied, stung by the tone of his voice.

  “Hold on, Jane, I didn’t mean ….” He stopped and ran his hand across his forehead, leaving another greasy trail. “There … there is so much to do here.”